FIRST PERIOD.

TO EIGHT YEARS OLD.

SECTION I.

MY first recollections are of some infantine impressions which were
in abeyance for a long course of years, and then revived an inexplicable
way,—as by a flash of lightning over a far horizon in the night. There is no
doubt of the genuineness of the remembrance, as the facts could not have
been told me by any one else. I remember standing on the threshold of a
cottage, holding fast by the doorpost, and putting my foot down, in repeated
attempts to reach the ground. Having accomplished the step, I toddled (I
remember the uncertain feeling) to a tree before the door, and tried to
clasp and get round it; but the rough bark hurt my hands. At night of the
same day, in bed, I was disconcerted by the coarse feel of the sheets,—so
much less smooth and cold than those at home; and I was alarmed by the
creaking of the bedstead when I moved. It was a turn‐up bedstead in a
cottage, or small farm‐house at Carleton, where I was sent for my health,
being a delicate child. My mother’s account of things was that I was all but
starved to death in the first weeks of my life,—the wetnurse being very
poor, and holding on to her good place after her milk was going or gone. The
discovery was made when I was three months old, and when I was fast
page: 8 sinking under diarrhœa. My bad health during my
whole childhood and youth, and even my deafness, was always ascribed by my
mother to this. However it might be about that, my health certainly was very
bad till I was nearer thirty than twenty years of age; and never was poor
mortal cursed with a more beggarly nervous system. The long years of
indigestion by day and night‐mare terrors are mournful to think of now.—Milk
has radically disagreed with me, all my life: but when I was a child, it was
a thing unheard of for children not to be fed on milk: so, till I was old
enough to have tea at breakfast, I went on having a horrid lump at my throat
for hours of every morning, and the most terrific oppressions in the night.
Sometimes the dim light of the windows in the night seemed to advance till
it pressed upon my eyeballs, and then the windows would seem to recede to an
infinite distance. If I laid my hand under my head on the pillow, the hand
seemed to vanish almost to a point, while the head grew as big as a
mountain. Sometimes I was panic struck at the head of the stairs, and was
sure I could never get down; and I could never cross the yard to the garden
without flying and panting, and fearing to look behind, because a wild beast
was after me. The starlight sky was the worst; it was always coming down, to
stifle and crush me, and rest upon my head. I do not remember any dread of
thieves or ghosts in particular; but things as I actually saw them were
dreadful to me; and it now appears to me that I had scarcely any respite
from the terror. My fear of persons was as great as any other. To the best
of my belief, the first person I was ever not afraid of was Aunt Kentish,
who won my heart and my confidence when I was sixteen. My heart was ready
enough to flow out; and it often did: but I always repented of such
expansion, the next time I dreaded to meet a human face.—It now occurs to
me, and it may be worth while to note it,—what the extremest terror of all
was about. We were often sent to walk on the Castle Hill at Norwich. In the
wide area below, the residents were wont to expose their feather‐beds, and
to beat them with a stick. That sound,—a dull shock,—used to make my heart
stand still: and it was no use my standing at the rails above, and
page: 9 seeing the process. The striking of the blow and
the arrival of the sound did not correspond; and this made matters worse. I
hated that walk; and I believe for that reason. My parents knew nothing of
all this. It never occurred to me to speak of anything I felt most: and I
doubt whether they ever had the slightest idea of my miseries. It seems to
me now that a little closer observation would have shown them the causes of
the bad health and fitful temper which gave them so much anxiety on my
account; and I am sure that a little more of the cheerful tenderness which
was in those days thought bad for children, would have saved me from my
worst faults, and from a world of suffering.

My hostess and nurse at the above‐mentioned cottage was a Mrs. Merton, who
was, as was her husband, a Methodist or melancholy Calvinist of some sort.
The family story about was that I came home the absurdest little preacher of
my years (between two and three) that ever was. I used to nod my head
emphatically, and say “Never ky for tyfles:” “Dooty fust, and pleasure
afterwards,” and so forth: and I sometimes got courage to edge up to
strangers, and ask them to give me—“a maxim.” Almost before I could join
letters, I got some sheets of paper,and folded them into a little square
book, and wrote, in double lines, two or three in a page, my beloved maxims.
I believe this was my first effort at book‐making. It was probably what I
picked up at Carleton that made me so intensely religious as I certainly was
from a very early age. The religion was of a bad sort enough, as might be
expected from the urgency of my needs; but I doubt whether I could have got
through without it. I pampered my vain‐glorious propensities by dreams of
divine favor, to make up for my utter deficiency of self‐respect: and I got
rid of otherwise incessant remorse by a most convenient confession and
repentance, which relieved my nerves without at all, I suspect, improving my
conduct.

To revert to my earliest recollections:—I certainly could hardly walk alone
when our nursemaid took us,—including my sister Elizabeth, who was eight
years older than myself,—an unusual walk; through a lane, (afterwards called
by us the
page: 10 “Spinner’s Lane”) where some Miss
Taskers, acquaintances of Elizabeth’s and her seniors, were lodging, in a
cottage which had a fir grove behind it. Somebody set me down at the foot of
a fir, where I was distressed by the slight rising of the ground at the
root, and by the long grass, which seemed a terrible entanglement. I looked
up the tree, and was scared at its height, and at that of so many others. I
was comforted with a fir‐cone; and then one of the Miss Taskers caught me up
in her arms and kissed me; and I was too frightened to cry till we got
away.—I was not more than two years old when an impression of touch occurred
to me which remains vivid to this day. It seems indeed as if impressions of
touch were at that age more striking than those from the other senses. I say
this from observation of others besides myself; for my own case is peculiar
in that matter. Sight, hearing and touch were perfectly good in early
childhood; but I never had the sense of smell; and that of taste was
therefore exceedingly imperfect. On the occasion I refer to, I was carried
down a flight of steep back stairs, and Rachel (a year and half older than
I) clung to the nursemaid’s gown, and Elizabeth was going before, (still
quite a little girl) when I put down my finger ends to feel a flat velvet
button on the top of Rachel’s bonnet. The rapture of the sensation was
really monstrous, as I remember it now. Those were our mourning bonnets for
a near relation; and this marks the date, proving me to have been only two
years old.

I was under three when my brother James was born. That day was another of the
distinct impressions which flashed upon me in after years. I found myself
within the door of the best bedroom,—an impressive place from being seldom
used, from its having a dark, polished floor, and from the awful large gay
figures of the chintz bed hangings. That day the curtains were drawn, the
window blinds were down, and an unknown old woman, in a mob cap, was at the
fire, with a bundle of flannel in her arms. She beckoned to me, and I tried
to go, though it seemed impossible to cross the slippery floor. I seem to
hear now the paltering of my feet. When I arrived at her knee, the
page: 11 nurse pushed out with her foot a tiny chair, used
as a footstool, made me sit down on it, laid the bundle of flannel across my
knees, and opened it so that I saw the little red face of the baby. I then
found out that there was somebody in the bed,—seeing a nightcap on the
pillow. This was on the 21st of April, 1805. I have a distinct recollection
of some incidents of that summer. My mother did not recover well from her
confinement, and was sent to the sea, at Yarmouth. On our arrival there, my
father took me along the old jetty,—little knowing what terror I suffered. I
remember the strong grasp of his large hand being some comfort; but there
were holes in the planking of the jetty quite big enough to let my foot
through; and they disclosed the horrible sight of waves flowing and receding
below, and great tufts of green weeds swaying to and fro. I remember the
sitting room at our lodgings, and my mother’s dress as she sat picking
shrimps, and letting me try to help her.—Of all my many fancies, perhaps
none was so terrible as a dream that I had at four years old. The impression
is as fresh as possible now; but I cannot at all understand what the fright
was about. I know nothing more strange than this power of re‐entering, as it
were, into the narrow mind of an infant, so as to compare it with that of
maturity; and therefore it may he worth while to record that piece of
precious nonsense,—my dream at four years old. I imagine I was learning my
letters then from cards, where each letter had its picture,—as a stag for S.
I dreamed that we children were taking our walk with our nursemaid out of
St. Austin’s Gate (the nearest bit of country to our house.) Out of the
public‐house there came a stag, with prodigious antlers. Passing the pump,
it crossed the road to us, and made a polite bow, with its head on one side,
and with a scrape of one foot, after which it pointed with its foot to the
public‐house, and spoke to me, inviting me in. The maid declined, and turned
to go home. Then came the terrible part. By the time we were at our own door
it was dusk, and we went up the steps in the dark; but in the kitchen it was
bright sunshine. My mother was standing at the dresser, breaking sugar; and
she lifted me up, and set me in the sun, and gave me a bit of sugar.
page: 12 Such was the dream which froze me with
horror! Who shall say why? But my panics were really unaccountable. They
were a matter of pure sensation, without any intellectual justification
whatever, even of the wildest kind. A magic‐lantern was exhibited to us on
Christmas‐day, and once or twice in the year besides. I used to see it
cleaned by daylight, and to handle all its parts,—understanding its whole
structure; yet, such was my terror of the white circle on the wall, and of
the moving slides, that, to speak the plain truth, the first apparition
always brought on bowel‐complaint; and, at the age of thirteen, when I was
pretending to take care of little children during the exhibition, I could
never look at it without having the back of a chair to grasp, or hurting
myself, to carry off the intolerable sensation. My bitter shame may be
conceived; but then, I was always in a state of shame about something or
other. I was afraid to walk in the town, for some years, if I remember
right, for fear of meeting two people. One was an unknown old lady who very
properly rebuked me one day for turning her off the very narrow pavement of
London Lane, telling me, in an awful way, that little people should make way
for their elders. The other was an unknown farmer, in whose field we had
been gleaning (among other trespassers) before the shocks were carried. This
man left the field after us, and followed us into the city,—no doubt, as I
thought, to tell the Mayor, and send the constable after us. I wonder how
long it was before I left off expecting that constable. There were certain
little imps, however, more alarming still. Our house was in a narrow street;
and all its windows, except two or three at the back, looked eastward. It
had no sun in the front rooms, except before breakfast in summer. One summer
morning, I went into the drawing‐room, which was not much used in those
days, and saw a sight which made me hide my face in a chair, and scream with
terror. The drops of the lustre on the mantle‐piece, on which the sun was
shining, were somehow set in motion, and the prismatic colors danced
vehemently on the walls. I thought they were alive,—imps of some sort; and I
never dared go into that room alone in the morning, from that time forward.
I am afraid
page: 13 I must own that my heart has
beat, all my life long, at the dancing of prismatic colors on the wall.

I was getting some comfort, however, from religion by this time. The Sundays
began to be marked days, and pleasantly marked, on the whole. I do not know
why crocuses were particularly associated with Sunday at that time; but
probably my mother might have walked in the garden with us, some early
spring Sunday. My idea of Heaven was of a place gay with yellow and lilac
crocuses. My love of gay colors was very strong. When I was sent with the
keys to a certain bureau in my mother’s room, to fetch miniatures of my
father and grandfather, to be shown to visitors, I used to stay an
unconscionable time, though dreading punishment for it, but utterly unable
to resist the fascination of a certain watch‐ribbon kept in a drawer there.
This ribbon had a pattern in floss silk, gay and beautifully shaded; and I
used to look at it till I was sent for, to be questioned as to what I had
been about. The young wild parsley and other weeds in the hedges used to
make me sick with their luscious green in spring. One crimson and purple
sunrise I well remember, when James could hardly walk alone, and I could not
therefore have been more than five. I awoke very early, that summer morning,
and saw the maid sound asleep in her bed, and “the baby” in his crib. The
room was at the top of the house; and some rising ground beyond the city
could be seen over the opposite roofs. I crept out of bed, saw James’s pink
toes showing themselves invitingly through the rails of his crib, and gently
pinched them, to wake him. With a world of trouble I got him over the side,
and helped him to the window, and upon a chair there. I wickedly opened the
window, and the cool air blew in; and yet the maid did not wake. Our arms
were smutted with the blacks on the window‐sill, and our bare feet were
corded with the impression of the rush‐buttomed chair; but we were not found
out. The sky was gorgeous, and I talked very religiously to the child. I
remember the mood, and the pleasure of expresing it, but nothing of what I
said.

I must have been a remarkably religious child, for the only
page: 14 support and pleasure I remember having from a
very early age was from that source. I was just seven when the grand event
of my childhood took place,—a journey to Newcastle to spend the summer (my
mother and four of her children) at my grandfather’s; and I am certain that
I cared more for religion before and during that summer than for anything
else. It was after our return, when Ann Turner, daughter of the Unitarian
Minister there, was with us, that my piety first took a practical character;
but it was familiar to me as an indulgence long before. While I was afraid
of everybody I saw, I was not in the least afraid of God. Being usually very
unhappy, I was constantly longing for heaven, and seriously, and very
frequently planning suicide in order to get there. I knew it was considered
a crime; but I did not feel it so. I had a devouring passion for
justice;—justice, first to my own precious self, and then to other oppressed
people. Justice was precisely what was least understood in our house, in
regard to servants and children. Now and then I desperately poured out my
complaints; but in general I brooded over my injuries, and those of others
who dared not speak; and then the temptation to suicide was very strong. No
doubt, there was much vindictiveness in it. I gloated over the thought that
I would make somebody care about me in some sort of way at last: and, as to
my reception in the other world, I felt sure that God could not be very
angry with me for making haste to him when nobody else cared for me, and so
many people plagued me. One day I went to the kitchen to get the great
carving knife, to cut my throat; but the servants were at dinner, and this
put it off for that time. By degrees, the design dwindled down into running
away. I used to lean out of the window, and look up and down the street, and
wonder how far I could go without being caught. I had no doubt at all that
if I once got into a farm‐house, and wore a woollen petticoat, and milked
the cows, I should be safe, and that nobody would inquire about me any
more.—It is evident enough that my temper must have been very bad. It seems
to me now that it was downright devilish, except for a placability which
used to
page: 15 annoy me sadly. My temper might
have been early made a thoroughly good one, by the slightest indulgence
shown to my natural affections, and any rational dealing with my faults: but
I was almost the youngest of a large family, and subject, not only to the
rule of severity to which all were liable, but also to the rough and
contemptuous treatment of the elder children, who meant no harm, but injured
me irreparably. I had no self‐respect, and an unbounded need of approbation
and affection. My capacity for jealousy was something frightful. When we
were little more than infants, Mr. Thomas Watson, son of my father’s
partner, one day came into the yard, took Rachel up in his arms, gave her
some grapes off the vine, and carried her home, across the street, to give
her Gay’s Fables, bound in red and gold. I stood with a bursting heart,
beating my hoop, and hating every body in the world. I always hated Gay’s
Fables, and for long could not abide a red book. Nobody dreamed of all this;
and the “taking down” system was pursued with me as with the rest, issuing
in the assumed doggedness and wilfulness which made me desperately
disagreeable during my youth, to every body at home. The least word or tone
of kindness melted me instantly, in spite of the strongest predeterminations
to be hard and offensive. Two occasions stand out especially in my memory,
as indeed almost the only instances of the enjoyment of tenderness
manifested to myself individually.

When I was four or five years old, we were taken to a lecture of Mr.
Drummond’s, for the sake, no doubt, of the pretty shows, we were to see,—the
chief of which was the Phantasmagoria of which we had heard, as a fine sort
of magic‐lantern. I did not like the darkness, to begin with; and when
Minerva appeared, in a red dress, at first extremely small, and then
approaching, till her owl seemed coming directly upon me, it was so like my
nightmare dreams that I shrieked aloud. I remember my own shriek. A pretty
lady who sat next us, took me on her lap, and let me hide my face in her
bosom, and held me fast. How intensely I loved her, without at all knowing
who she was! From that time we knew her, and she filled a large space in my
life; and above forty years after, I had the honor of having her for my
page: 16 guest in my own house. She was Mrs. Lewis
Cooper, then the very young mother of two girls of the ages of Rachel and
myself, of whom I shall have to say more presently.—The other occasion was
when I had a terrible ear‐ache one Sunday. The rest went to chapel in the
afternoon; and my pain grew worse. Instead of going into the kitchen to the
cook, I wandered into a lumber room at the top of the house. I laid my
aching ear against the cold iron screw of a bedstead, and howled with pain;
but nobody came to me. At last, I heard the family come home from chapel. I
heard them go into the parlor, one after another, and I knew they were
sitting round the fire in the dusk. I stole down to the door, and stood on
the mat, and heard them talking and laughing merrily. I stole in, thinking
they would not observe me, and got into a dark corner. Presently my mother
called to me, and asked what I was doing there. Then I burst out,—that my
ear ached so I did not know what to do! Then she and my father
both called me tenderly, and she took me on her lap, and laid the ear on her
warm bosom. I was afraid of spoiling her starched muslin handkerchief with
the tears which would come; but I was very happy, and wished
that I need never move again. Then of course came remorse for all my
naughtiness; but I was always suffering that, though never, I believe, in my
whole childhood, being known to own myself wrong. I must have been an
intolerable child; but I need not have been so.

I was certainly fond of going to chapel before that Newcastle era which
divided my childhood into two equal portions: but my besetting troubles
followed me even there. My passion for justice was baulked there, as much as
any where. The duties preached were those of inferiors to superiors, while
the per contra was not insisted on with
any equality of treatment at all. Parents were to bring up their children
“in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and to pay servants due wages;
but not a word was ever preached about the justice due from the stronger to
the weaker. I used to thirst to hear some notice of the oppression which
servants and children had (as I supposed universally) to endure, in regard
to their feelings, while duly clothed,
page: 17 fed,
and taught: but nothing of the sort ever came; but instead, a doctrine of
passive obedience which only made me remorseful and miserable. I was
abundantly obedient in act; for I never dreamed of being otherwise; but the
interior rebellion kept my conscience in a state of perpetual torture. As
far as I remember my conscience was never of the least use to me; for I
always concluded myself wrong about every thing, while pretending entire
complacency and assurance. My moral discernment was almost wholly obscured
by fear and mortification.—Another misery at chapel was that I could not
attend to the service, nor refrain from indulging in the most absurd
vain‐glorious dreams, which I was ashamed of, all the while. The Octagon
Chapel at Norwich has some curious windows in the roof;—not skylights, but
letting in light indirectly. I used to sit staring up at those windows, and
looking for angels to come for me, and take me to heaven, in sight of all
the congregation,—the end of the world being sure to happen while we were at
chapel. I was thinking of this, and of the hymns, the whole of the time, it
now seems to me. It was very shocking to me that I could not pray at chapel.
I believe that I never did in my life. I prayed abundantly when I was alone;
but it was impossible to me to do it in any other way; and the hypocrisy of
appearing to do so was a long and sore trouble to me.—All this is very
painful; but I really remember little that was not painful at that time of
my life.—To be sure, there was Nurse Ayton, who used to come, one or two
days in the week, to sew. She was kind to me, and I was fond of her. She
told us long stories about her family; and she taught me to sew. She
certainly held the family impression of my abilities,—that I was a dull,
unobservant, slow, awkward child. In teaching me to sew, she used to say
(and I quite acquiesced) that “slow and sure” was the maxim for me, and
“quick and well” was the maxim for Rachel. I was not jealous about this,—it
seemed to me so undeniable. On one occasion only I thought Nurse Ayton
unkind. The back of a rickety old nursing‐chair came off when I was playing
on it; and I was sure she could save me from being scolded by sewing it on
again. I insisted that she could sew anything. This made my
mother
page: 18 laugh when she came up; and so I
forgave nurse: and I believe that was our only quarrel.

My first political interest was the death of Nelson. I was then four years
old. My father came in from the counting‐house at an unusual hour, and told
my mother, who cried heartily. I certainly had some conception of a battle,
and of a great man being a public loss. It always rent my heart‐strings (to
the last day of her life,) to see and hear my mother cry; and in this case
it was clearly connected with the death of a great man. I had my own notions
of Bonaparte too. One day, at dessert, when my father was talking anxiously
to my mother about the expected invasion, for which preparations were made
all along the Norfolk coast, I saw them exchange a glance, because I was
standing staring, twitching my pinafore with terror. My father called me to
him, and took me on his knee, and I said “But, papa, what will you do if
Boney comes?” “What will I do?” said he, cheerfully, “Why, I will ask him to
take a glass of Port with me,”—helping himself to a glass as he spoke. That
wise reply was of immense service to me. From the moment I knew that “Boney”
was a creature who could take a glass of wine, I dreaded him no more. Such
was my induction into the department of foreign affairs. As to social
matters,—my passion for justice was cruelly crossed, from the earliest time
I can remember, by the imposition of passive obedience and silence on
servants and tradespeople, who met with a rather old‐fashioned treatment in
our house. We children were enough in the kitchen to know how the maids
avenged themselves for scoldings in the parlor, before the family and
visitors, to which they must not reply; and for being forbidden to wear
white gowns, silk gowns, or any thing but what strict housewives approved.
One of my chief miseries was being sent with insulting messages to the
maids,—e.g., to “bid them not be so like carthorses overhead,” and the like.
On the one hand, it was a fearful sin to alter a message; and, on the other,
it was impossible to give such an one as that: so I used to linger and delay
to the last moment, and then deliver something civil, with all imaginable
sheepishness, so that the maids used to look at one another
page: 19 and laugh. Yet, one of my most heartfelt sins was
towards a servant who was really a friend of my mother’s and infinitely
respected, and a good deal loved, by us children,—Susan Ormsby, who came to
live with us just before James was born, and staid till that memorable
Newcastle journey, above four years afterwards. When she was waiting at
dinner one day, I stuck my knife upright, in listening to something, so that
the point cut her arm. I saw her afterwards washing it at the pump; and she
shook her head at me in tender reproach. My heart was bursting; but I dared
not tell her how sorry I was. I never got over it, or was happy with her
again; and when we were to part, the night before our journey, and she was
kissing us with tears, it was in dumb grief and indignation that I heard her
tell my mother that children do not feel things as grown people do, and that
they could not think of any thing else when they were going a journey.

One more fact takes its place before that journey,—the awakening of a love of
money in me. I suspect I have had a very narrow escape of being an eminent
miser. A little more, or a little less difficulty, or another mode of
getting money would easily have made me a miser. The first step, as far as I
remember, was when we played cards, one winter evening, at our uncle
Martineau’s, when I was told that I had won twopence. The pavement hardly
seemed solid when we walked home,—so elated was I. I remember equal delight
when Mrs. Meadows Taylor gave us children twopence when we expected only a
halfpenny, to buy string for a top: but in this last case it was not the
true amor nummi, as in the other. The same
avarice was excited in the same way, a few years later, when I won
eighteen‐pence at cards on a visit. The very sight of silver and copper was
transporting to me, without any thought of its use. I stood and looked long
at money, as it lay in my hand. Yet I do not remember that this passion ever
interfered with my giving away money, though it certainly did with my
spending it otherwise. I certainly wa very close, all my childhood and
youth. I may as well mention here that I made rules and kept them, in regard
to my expenditure, from the time I had an allowance. I believe we gave
away
page: 20 something out of our first
allowance of a penny a week. When we had twopence, I gave away half. The
next advance was to half‐a‐guinea a quarter, to buy gloves and sashes: then
to ten pounds a year (with help) for clothes; then fifteen, and finally
twenty, without avowed help. I sewed indefatigably all those years,—being in
truth excessively fond of sewing, with the amusement of either gossiping, or
learning poetry by heart, from a book, lying open under my work. I never had
the slightest difficulty in learning any amount of verse; and I knew enough
to have furnished me for a wandering reciter,—if there had been such a
calling in our time,—as I used to wish there was. While thus busy, I made
literally all my clothes, as I grew up, except stays and shoes. I platted
bonnets at one time, knitted stockings as I read aloud, covered silk shoes
for dances, and made all my garments. Thus I squeezed something out of the
smaller allowance, and out of the fifteen pounds, I never spent more than
twelve in dress; and never more than fifteen pounds out of the twenty. The
rest I gave away, except a little which I spent in books. The amount of time
spent in sewing now appears frightful; but it was the way in those days,
among people like ourselves. There was some saving in our practice of
reading aloud, and in mine of learning poetry in such mass: but the
censorious gossip which was the bane of our youth drove prose and verse out
of the field, and wasted more of our precious youthful powers and
dispositions than any repentance and amendment in after life could repair.
This sort of occupation, the sewing however, was less unfitting than might
now appear, considering that the fortunes of manufacturers, like my father,
were placed in jeopardy by the war, and that there was barely a chance for
my father ever being able to provide fortunes for his daughters. He and my
mother exercised every kind of self‐denial to bring us up qualified to take
care of ourselves. They pinched themselves in luxuries to provide their
girls, as well as their boys, with masters and schooling; and they brought
us up to an industry like their own;—the boys in study and business, and the
girls in study and household cares. Thus was I saved from being a literary
lady who could not sew; and when, in
page: 21 after
years, I have been insulted by admiration at not being helpless in regard to
household employments, I have been wont to explain, for my mother’s sake,
that I could make shirts and puddings, and iron and mend, and get my bread
by my needle, if necessary,—(as it once was necessary, for a few months),
before I won a better place and occupation with my pen.

page: 22

SECTION II.

BUT it is time to set out on the second period of my
childhood,—beginning with that memorable Newcastle journey. That period was
memorable, not only from the enlarging of a child’s ideas which ensues upon
a first long journey, but because I date from it my becoming what is
commonly called “a responsible being.” On my return home I began to take
moral charge of myself. I had before, and from my earliest recollections,
been subject to a haunting, wretched, useless remorse; but from the time of
our return from Newcastle, bringing Ann Turner with us, I became practically
religious with all my strength. Ann was, I think, fourteen when I was seven;
and that she made herself my friend at all was a great thing for me; and it
fell out all the more easily for her tendencies being exclusively religious,
while I was only waiting for some influence to determine my life in that
direction.

Travelling was no easy matter in those days. My mother, our dear, pretty,
gentle aunt Margaret, sister Elizabeth, aged fifteen, Rachel, myself, and
little James, aged four, and in nankeen frocks, were all crammed into a
post‐chaise, for a journey of three or four days. Almost every incident of
those days is still fresh: but I will report only one, which is curious from
showing how little aware we children were of our own value. I really think,
if I had once conceived that any body cared for me, nearly all the sins and
sorrows of my anxious childhood would have been spared me; and I remember
well that it was Ann Turner who first conveyed the cheering truth to me. She
asked me why my mother sat sewing so diligently for us children, and sat up
at night to mend my stockings, if she did not care for me; and I was
convinced at once;—only too happy to believe it, and being unable to resist
such evidence as the stocking‐mending
page: 23 at
night, when we children were asleep. Well: on our second day’s journey, we
stopped at Burleigh House, and the three elders of the party went in, to see
the picture gallery.—Children were excluded; so we three little ones were
left to play among the haymakers on the lawn. After what seemed a long time,
it suddenly struck us that the elders must have forgotten us, and gone on to
Newcastle without us. I, for my part, was entirely persuaded that we should
never be missed, or remembered more by any body; and we set up a terrible
lamentation. A good‐natured haymaker, a sunburnt woman whose dialect we
could not understand, took us in hand, and led us to the great door, where
we were soon comforted by my mother’s appearance. I remember wondering why
she and aunt Margaret laughed aside when they led us back to the chaise.

Of course it was difficult to amuse little children so cooped up for so long.
There was a little quiet romping, I remember, and a great deal of story
telling by dear aunty: but the finest device was setting us to guess what we
should find standing in the middle of grandpapa’s garden. As it was
something we had never seen or known about, there was no end to the
guessing. When we arrived at the gates of the Forth, (my grandfather’s
house) the old folks and their daughters came out to meet us, all tearful
and agitated: and I, loathing myself for the selfishness, could
not wait, but called out,—“I want to see what that thing is in
the garden.” After an enlightening hint, and without any rebuke, our
youngest aunt took me by the hand, and led me to face the mystery. I could
make nothing of it when I saw it. It was a large, heavy, stone sundial. That
dial is worth this much mention, for it was of immeasurable value to me. I
could see its face only by raising myself on tiptoe on its step: and there,
with my eyes on a level with the plate, did I watch and ponder, day by day,
painfully forming my first clear conceptions of Time, amidst a bright
confusion of notions of day and night, and of the seasons, and of the
weather. I loved that dial with a sort of superstition; and when, nearly
forty years after, I built a house for myself at Ambleside, my strong wish
was to have this very dial for the platform below the terrace: but it was
not
page: 24 to be had. It had been once removed
already,—when the railway cut through the old garden; and the stone mass was
too heavy, and far too much fractured and crumbled for a second removal. So
a dear friend set up for me a beautiful new dial; and I can only hope that
it may possibly render as great a service to some child of a future
generation as my grandfather’s did for me.

It seems to me now that I seldom asked questions in those days. I went on for
years together in a puzzle, for want of its ever occurring to me to ask
questions. For instance, no accounts of a spring‐gun answered to my
conception of it;—that it was a pea‐green musket, used only in spring! This
absurdity at length lay by unnoticed in my mind till I was twenty! Even so!
At that age, I was staying at Birmingham; and we were returning from a
country walk in the dusk of the evening, when my host warned us not to cross
a little wood, for fear of spring‐guns; and he found and showed us the wire
of one. I was truly confounded when the sense of the old mistake, dormant in
my mind till now, came upon me. Thus it was with a piece of mystification
imposed on me by my grandfather’s barber in 1809. One morning, while the
shaving‐pot was heating, the barber took me on his knee, and pretended to
tell me why he was late that morning. Had I ever heard of a failing star?
Yes, I had. Well: a star had fallen in the night; and it fell in the Forth
lane, which it completely blocked up, beside Mr. Somebody’s orchard. It was
quite round, and of the beautifullest and clearest crystal. “Was it there
still?” O yes,—or most of it: but some of the crystal was shivered off, and
people were carrying it away when he arrived at the spot. He had to go round
by Something Street; and it was that which made him late. “Would there be
any left by the time we went for our walk?” He hoped there might. I got
through my lessons in a fever of eagerness that morning, and engaged the
nurse maid to take us through that lane. There was the orchard, with the
appletree stretching over the wall: but not a single spike of the crystal
was left. I thought it odd; but it never occurred to me to doubt the story,
or to speak to any body about it, except the
bar‐
page: 25 ber.
barber
I lay in wait for him the next morning; and very sorry he
professed to be;—so sorry that he had not just picked up some crystals for
me while there were so many; but no doubt I should come in the way of a
fallen star myself, some day. We kept this up till October, when we bade him
good bye: and my early notions of astronomy were cruelly bewildered by that
man’s rhodomontade. I dare not say how many years it was before I got quite
clear of it.

There is little that is pleasant to say of the rest of that absence from
home. There was a naughty boy staying at my grandfather’s, who caused us to
be insulted by imputations of stealing the green fruit, and to be shut out
of the garden, where we had never dreamed of touching a gooseberry: and he
led little James into mischief; and then canted and made his own part good.
Our hearts swelled under the injuries he caused us. Then, we were
injudiciously fed, and my nightmare miseries were intolerable. The best
event was that my theological life began to take form. I had a prodigious
awe of clergymen and ministers, and a strong yearning towards them for
notice. No doubt there was much vanity in this; but it was also one
investment of the religious sentiment, as I know by my being at times
conscious of a remnant of the feeling now, while radically convinced that
the intellectual and moral judgment of priests of all persuasions is
inferior to that of any other order of men. The first of the order who took
any direct notice of me was, as far as I know, good Mr. Turner of Newcastle,
my mother’s pastor and friend before her marriage. At Newcastle, we usually
went to tea at his house on Sunday evenings; and it was then that we began
the excellent practice of writing recollections of one of the sermons of the
day. When the minister preaches what children can understand, this practice
is of the highest use in fixing their attention, and in disclosing to their
parents the character and imperfections of their ideas on the most important
class of subjects. On occasion of our first attempt,—Rachel’s and mine,—I
felt very triumphant beforehand. I remembered the text; and it seemed to me
that my head was full of thoughts from the sermon. I scrawled over the whole
of a large slate,
page: 26 and was not a little
mortified when I found that all I had written came into seven or eight lines
of my mother’s handwriting. I made sure that I had not been cheated, and
then fell into discouragement at finding that my grand “sermon” came to
nothing more. However, my attempt was approved; I was allowed to “sit up to
supper,” and the Sunday practice was begun which continued till I grew too
deaf to keep up my attention successfully. For some years of that long
period, our success was small, because Mr. Madge’s, (our minister’s) sermons
conveyed few clear ideas to children, though much sweet and solemn
impression. Dr. Carpenter’s were the best I ever listened to for the
purpose:—so good that I have known him carry a “recollection” written by a
cousin of mine at the age of sixteen, to Mrs. Carpenter, as a curiosity,—not
a single sentence of his sermon being altogether absent from the hearer’s
version of it.—Another religious impression that we children brought from
Newcastle is very charming to me still. Our gentle, delicate aunt Mary, whom
I remember so well in her white gown, with her pink color, thin silky brown
hair, and tender manner towards us, used to get us round her knees as she
sat in the window‐seat at the Forth, where the westerly sun shone in, and
teach us to sing Milton’s hymn “Let us with a gladsome mind.” It is the very
hymn for children, set to its own simple tune; and I always, to this day,
hear aunt Mary’s weak, earnest voice in it. That was the gentle hymn. The
woe‐breathing one was the German Evening Hymn. The heroic one, which never
failed to rouse my whole being was “Awake, my soul; stretch every nerve,”
sung to Artaxerxes. In those days, we learned Mrs. Barbauld’s Prose Hymns by
heart; and there were parts of them which I dearly loved: but other parts
made me shiver with awe. I did not know what “shaking bogs” were, and was
alarmed at that mysterious being “Child of Mortality.” On the whole,
however, religion was a great comfort and pleasure to me; and I studied the
New Testament very heartily and profitably, from the time that Ann Turner
went south with us, and encouraged me to confession and morning and nightly
prayer.